Old-man lifeworks : D.I.Y Retaining walls, part one

Dear readers, we are writing these posts, because we want to write some D.I.Y. Brickwork and building retaining walls and other things, so that you can learn something about how to built something yourself, at least in theory. But in this blog we are also trying to get you interested to become a tradesman. So, keep reading please.

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My other sites; http://frankmenchise.com,http://diybrickwork.com,http://manneedsgod.co.uk

Anyhow, you can see our entire articles at this addresses, DIY brickwork

and, http://diybrickwork.com,

Garden retaining wall. There are many types of retaining walls, this one above is a masonry stone retaining wall, these types of retaining walls last a long time, when they are well built, like the one here above, but they may cost a lot more than other types of retaining walls.

Welcome to our blog, DIY Retaining walls

Let us talk about a well-built stone retaining wall

Dear readers, let me explain what is happening now, in our previous articles, we have talked about how to D.I.Y brickwork and how to build a brick veneer house, now, let us talk about retaining walls. Because I believe that most people that own a standalone house, want to improve their property by doing a few things in the yard, where they can stay outside and have a garden, or have a barbecue with their family and friends. But there are times when it is not easy to stay outside, because the yard is not level and, in some places, it is hard even to stand up straight. So, when that is the case, something needs to be done to improve the situation. In this case retaining walls can help solve that problem. But how do we build retaining walls one may ask?

Before we answer that question, let us talk about the retaining stone wall shown above in this article, I believe that it is a well-built stone wall, but a wall like that is very costly and hard to build, unless you are an expert and know what needs to be done.

So, let us see what we can learn from this stone wall picture, just by looking at it and trying to imagine how this wall has been built. What we can note from the picture is that the retaining wall has been built leaning towards the bank it is holding up, we can see this better, if you look at the right end of the wall where the wall goes around the corner, the stones are laid dry as there is no sign of any mortar around, the stones are not all the same size, and they are longer and shorter stones, but they are all the same thickness and they are laid the same way as we lay a course of bricks, but at the same time the mason has made sure that the vertical join are not setting one above the other, and this is a hard thing to do with stones all different size, everything is so tidy, the wall thickness is not shown anywhere, but because there is a very low wall started near, it seems that the wall has been built like a double brick wall, we can also guess that perhaps some of the short stones are not really short, but they have been laid like a header brick to tie the front with the back of the wall, at the top the last course of stone, the stones are longer and as wide as the whole wall itself, so that they would tie everything together. These are the main features that we can learn from looking at this stonewall picture.

Now that we have explained that, let us write how to do it yourself retaining walls. You know, there are many types of retaining walls, some are easy to build others are hard to build, and there are many reasons for building them. So, this article is going to be a long article, so, we are going to break it up and make several blogs from our original article in Hub Pages, DIY Retaining walls, because we want to tell you about them, as much as we can.

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This is another type of stone retaining wall, as you can see, it has been built leaning against the bank, so, you can say that retaining wall are built leaning towards the bank for extra strength.

How to build retaining walls

Okay, there are several ways how to build a retaining wall, and there are several types of retaining walls that we can build. Therefore, first we must see what we gain by building this type of retaining wall, or that type of retaining wall, and above all how much it could cost, before we can decide what type of retaining wall to build. Now we want to build our retaining walls with building materials that are easily available, to avoid extra cost. So, look what local materials are available, where you are. You see, if you are in a place where stones or rocks are plentiful, and you may even have some of them in your yard, then it is cheaper to build your retaining wall with these materials, and even if you have to buy the lot they are cheap anyhow; but if you are in a place where there are plenty of trees and there is even a sawmill nearby, then it is more appropriate to build it with timber.

Having said that, it is obvious that for you to decide, what is the best retaining wall to build; we need to explain to you what could be done and how can it be done. Therefore, hereunder we will try to do that. Let us start with a very easy and cheap retaining wall that most people can do themselves, even if they don’t know much about building, as long as they have a few tools and know how to use them; here we are saying that anyone of us can dig a few holes in the ground to place a few short posts and place a couple of sleeper timber planks against those posts, then secure them by nailing or screwing them to the posts. It sounds and is simple, isn’t it? But this is not the only retaining wall that we want to show you, so, keep reading this article, while we add more descriptions, because you can even learn how to build them.

I believe that I have written most thing that can be written in D.I.Y brickwork and started D.I.Y retaining walls. So, in our next post, we will continue talking about, D.I.Y Retaining walls.

See you soon.

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This blog-site is; old man-lifeworks

This blog is, D.I.Y Retaining walls, part one

IS TO BE CONTINUED WITH

D.I.Y Retaining walls, part two

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It is helpful if we keep our personal links handy. These links hereunder are my links, feel free to visit them.

http://diybrickwork.com

http://manneedsgod.co.uk

http://frankmenchise.com

https://sites.google.com/site/menfrancoreconciliation/